Review for Ministerial Kneepads Chapter 1 from goddessa39 on July 22, 2008

I don't get it... was it Percy she had seen or what?

Author reply
When Rita visited Percy and earned her "Ministerial Kneepads," she really was servicing a polyjuiced Harry. Later, she agreed to leave him alone until after she'd done something she had already done. Harry's "twinkling eyes" were a proxy for a Legillimancy plant of the idea into her head. The hair in the end was Percy's.

Review for Ministerial Kneepads Chapter 1 from stealacandy on February 27, 2008

Not 100% sure about it, but I think sweimming in urea for three hours ought to have killed the beetle. That's like ants in the honey jar. Osmosis and all that, you know. stealacandy

Author reply
You're probably right. I borrowed this idea from how we used to deal with rats on the farm where I grew up. I used to work "shelling corn", which amounted to taking corn that was dried over the winter as full ears and running it through a machine to separate cobs from kernels. A "feature" of the work was the large number of rats and mice we encountered that lived in the corn. We would always have on site a half-filled barrel of water that we would toss them into (we carried pliers for the sole purpose of grabbing and tossing potentially rabid rats without getting bitten). Once in the barrel, the rats would climb over each other for, typically, a few hours before exhaustion would set in and they would drown.